I Hate It When You Call Me That
by JArchetype
Summary: Over the course of her life Ahsoka Tano has been called many different names by many different people. Yet, she still finds it within herself to embody every single one. - A series of drabbles and oneshots in no particular order.
1. Youngling

**Youngling**

 _She arrives at the temple wide eyes and in awe. She stands in a line with the other younglings practicing their katas and breathing. The force has never felt this strong to her, and_

 _everywhere she looks she can FEEL people like her. Finally, someone will understand how she feels. They will feel things the same way. She wont have to explain how she just_

 _'_ _knows' or does or things or acts. For they will act with her. They know more then she. For once she wont be the last one standing alone by intuition. For the first time in her_

 _life….she isn't alone._


	2. Soka

**Soka**

 _Warm light floods my memories and the force is fuzzy and sweet around me. She calls me Soka, and smiles at me. She's always bigger then me, but I try to keep up, and she's_

 _the bossier out of the two of us, but I don't mind, cause I can be bossy too. I can be snippy just like her. I can be bigger just like her, and I can grow up to be just like her. Her face_

 _markings are darker than mine, and pointer at her forehead. She says it means she's smart, and the diamond on mine means I'm a target for akuls and predators. Its alright though,_

 _because she's bigger then me. Older then me. She says she will protect me, cause she says "Soka, thats a what big sisters are for."_

 _Imagine her_ _surprise when she sees me kill one. An A real live akul. Her face markings paled and her eyes widened. "Soka. how did you make it fly?" That was all she could say. I didn't answer. I didn't know._

 _"_ _It was going to hurt you, and I can protect too. I can be just like you."_

 _She won't say she's jealous, but I can feel it. I'm too young to have a headdress of razor sharp teeth. I'm not a warrior, I'm just Soka. Small unassuming Soka. She never says it_

 _out loud, but the warmth around her recedes and I can feel her anger, I feel the disappointment. Little sisters should look up to their big sister. They don't get to experience life first._

 _She stops calling me Soka. Instead she calls me by my tribal name - it sounds strange coming from her. I don't like it I hate the headdress too. It takes getting used to, and it_

 _scratches my lekku, they say once the calluses come I'll be used to it. I don't like that either._

 _For the first time in months she says my name. It's full of annoyance and her voice hides no irritation. It's dark and mama and papa are talking to a man. My sister calls him_

 _strange, but I like him. He's warm and fuzzy, yet solid, like the big trees. She says it again - my name- this time in shock, as if I had killed the akul again. I rub the sleep from my_

 _eyes. "Go back to bed," She snarls "You shouldn't be_ _eavesdropping_ _." And like a good little sister, I listen, but not without the defiance of my hands on my hips and my tongue pointed at her._

 _She shoos me off. She feels sad and worried, but I'm only too happy she finally said my name._

 _She cries when I am taken, and pulls at the strange mans robes. Or at least they say he's strange, but not to me. He has the same fuzzy warmth that I tell her about. She screams_

 _it over and over. "Soka! Soka!" Papa holds her back, and mama picks her up. "SOKA!" She calls again, and it echoes through my head until it blends into the soundscape. I can_

 _no longer hear it. Yet, the same fuzzy warmth vibrates tickling my mortals like two syllable taps. I'm sleepy and confused. I drift into a slumber on the strange mans shoulder. My_

 _eyelids heavy and senses abuzz. I swear I can still hear it, through the two syllable fuzzy warm feeling, it sounds strangely like my name…strangely like her._

 _'_ _Soka!'_


	3. Commander Tano (young'un)

_Commander Tano/young'un_

"She's just a kid." They say. But I'll show them. Wait and see.

 _'I could lead them...'_

Thousands of the same face salute me with this title. All nearly twice a decade older then me in looks…and more importantly - experience. They address me as commander, yet, despite my rank I still don't feel like one. I should, but I don't. They are my responsibility. As crazy as it sounds, a 14 year old togrutan girl, who only recently learned reverse hand grip, is calling the shots.

 _Force help us._

Anakin says all I need is a bit of confidence. Obi-wan says I need wisdom. Padme says I need to be diplomatic. Honestly, I think I just need a good dose of "kriff it." cause I still don't know what I'm doing. Pure unadulterated headstrong will has seemed to work for Anakin so far, so if it's good enough for the Chosen one it's good enough for me? Right?

I look at the clones though, they tear down confident posers within seconds. All it takes is one hard glance and the belligerent faint of heart crumble at their boots. Their jar head mentality leaves little to no room for patience when it comes to inadequacy.

I like to watch as Rex leads - their first in command. How many fights has be been through? How many battles has he seen? How many of his men - his brothers- has he watched fall on the battle field. While I was still playing Jedi in the temple, he was cleaving droids in half via blaster shots. He often calls me 'young'un.' I don't know whether it's an endearment or a reminder to keep me in my place. Maybe both - an endearing reminder?

"Fake it till you make it." I mutter to myself over and over. when they pass me in the hall, when I'm saluted at ceremony, or when I debrief before battle. Rows of soldiers stand columned like marble statues. Their faces flash before me, all ridged, coursing with pent up adrenaline, and starched to the core. Anakin could lead them. Obi-wan could lead them. Rex could lead them. _'I, I...I can lead them. I...can lead them...?'_

"Yes, Commander Tano!" They chorus perfectly.

Once again, in welcome contrast, there is always Rex.

"Wheres the young'un?"

"What did the young'un say?"

"Ask the young'un."

And my personal favorite. "Young'uns orders."

It's a constant reminder that I am still - despite all my training, number of droid kills, status, or abilities - that I am still, in essence, a…. _kid_. Not yet a commander. Just a child with momentous childhood shattering responsibilities. There is a strange comfort to that. Maybe it lightens the heavy thought of responsibilities. Someone remembers. Someone sees. Yet, there is no judgment in his tone. No thinly veiled scorn regarding my age or inexperience.

"Hey there young'un." Rex greets me after the battle while boarding the ship. A small smirk visible as he lifts the mask off his head, the airlock letting off a small 'hiss.' I'm covered in filth and sweat and I smell like the underside of a bantha. There are minor scrapes and cuts decorating my arms and bruises can be seen blooming across my forearms. He's seen me worse off, and we both know it. "Worse for wear?" He teases. Despite a minor case of exhaustion I manage to shake my head and offer a weary smile in reply.

I still don't know which I prefer from him. To hear, "Commander Tano." as he stands at attention in full clone regalia or, "Young'un"….the way it rolls of his tongue in gentle familiarity and into the air like a cloud of smoke. Nothing forced, nothing proper, yet it always puts me on my toes. Both a reminder of what I am and used to be - what I am and what I will be. I square my shoulders and stare straight ahead trying to hide my fatigue as two passing clones salute me.

"Commander Tano." They chime.

 _'I can_ _lead_ _them.'_

Both, I suppose. Both is good.


	4. Former Padawan Ahsoka Tano

**Former Padawan Tano**

Dear Senator Amidala ,

Forgive my delayed reply, I'm currently in a rush, but I wanted to say goodbye. I'm leaving Corruscant, you see. Life in the underworld hasn't been pleasant by any stretch, but I've learned a lot down here. All of Anakin's unorthodox street smarts have come in handy. I haven't told Anakin yet, but I will….soon. Please wait and let him hear it from me. Or read it from me. Whichever comes first I suppose. I don't know if I can face him yet. I haven't seen him since, well, since I left.

Anyway, that wasn't my main reason for writing this letter. I never had a proper chance to say, 'thank you.' Thank you for everything. I know Anakin played a part in recruiting you, but you didn't have to defend me in my trial. I know how it looked - bad. Horribly, guiltily bad. However, despite the odds you made my case out of nothing and built it up to have a fighting chance. Aside from Anakin, you were the only other person not to lose hope in me. Please don't ever feel like you could have done more, or that you failed in some way. You were there when I needed help. Thank you, truly.

It's almost comical really. That a senator would have taken my side before a fellow jedi. "Former Padawan Tano". Did you know it's like a felony? A dishonorable discharge they say. It follows me everywhere. It's on every holo file, paper, identification, or chip from hear on out. In the systems anddata-bases it says "Former Padawan Ahsoka Tano: Stripped of padawan and commander status in the Jedi order and 501st battalion. It hurt,oh force it really did. Worse then any cut, bomb, or burn. The trial was only a formality. They made their choice long before I had entered the room. The people who had watched me grow. The elders that raised me. The people who I looked up to and aspired to be like! They threw me away like trash. I was exiled from the only home I had ever known and treated as an enemy. Do you think wounds like that ever heal? The Jedi way taught us there is emotion yet peace. The only emotions I knew in that moment were hurt, and anger. I'm still waiting for the peace. It hasn't seems to come yet…. Then again, I'm no longer a jedi, so do the rules still apply? Will the peace ever come?

I find myself asking these questions at night when its's quiet and the noise of the underground shifts into a monotonous electric buzz. Is everything I once knew a lie? If the mentors that raised me, the ones I looked up to betrayed me; gave up on me and threw me to the wolves. If the upholders of the Jedi code couldn't see the truth and sold me out to my death sentence all for the face of the order is everything I know a lie? If the council couldn't uphold the code how could I ever hope to, and if that which was done to me was representative of the ways of the code then I want no part in it!

Maybe I'm bitter. Obviously I'm harboring some amount of resentment but I find since I left the temple, I have more questions than answers. It worries me. No, let me clarify; it absolutely frightens me. Lately I've been thinking about Barriss. Her trial was yesterday….Would you be surprised to hear I feel the least betrayed by her? At least she believed in what she was doing, despite the devastating toll it took on the lives around her. She wasn't coerced and no one forced her hand. No excuses. No apologies. Despite admiring her resolve, I can't condone any of it, but do you think…perhaps... Do you think perhaps she was right? Has the Jedi order become what they, what we, fought so long to destroy? Has corruption seeped in? I sense in the force that the lines may be blurring. I'm no longer certain. I've heard plenty o rumors. Most of which sting, but the talk never ceases. Like I said, life in the underground supplies more questions than answers.

Sincerely,

 _Former Padawan Ahsoka Tano_

P.S.

Would this make Anakin "Former Master Anakin Skywalker?"


	5. Tano

**Tano (Ahsoka)**

He calls to her; detached and with the stain of another woman across his thoughts. She tries to deny it, but her force empathy won't allow her to do so. It's months before he can drop the honorific of jedi - despite her protests. She thinks back to their last meeting. Her name is clipped when is leaves his lips. After all this time her voice is lost to her. They stand still as statues; posed against the backwash of moonlight. She shouldn't be there. He should have called the guards. Yet, neither of them move - It's small, but it's a start.

Lux can only stare at the woman before him. She's no great beauty by any means, but she's dark and feral. Awe inspiring in the way a storm in before it tears the earth to shreds. She's grown older, taller, more experienced, and travelled….but then again, so has he. She doesn't speak, till she knows it's him. The glow of a light saber illuminates his face as she holds him in place. She asks if he's afraid. He answers with a blaster to her neck. "Tano." He calls again, and she stiffens. She replies with a smirk. "Who else did you expect?" Looking down she's surprised by the familiar object. That isn't his blaster, but she knew who it belonged to. A fellow rebel. A long lost martyr.

 _Steela_

She briefly wonders if he ever kept anything of hers before quelling the thought with her better judgment. She had hoped this job would be simple like the rest, but Lux Bontari had never been simple to her. He would never make it that easy.

* * *

A week passes and she can't find it in herself to leave. In a moment of what he could only have deemed as poor judgment he hired her. He tells himself it's because she's the best, and she knows the others who would come for him - she knows how they work. Part of him wonders if she would have actually killed him that night, but when he asks she never answers. One day, he thinks he hears her answer in the form of a mumble.

"If I hadn't taken the job, someone else would."

* * *

Ahsoka and Steela. Too alike for his own good. As he pulls at the strings of his memory he can't help but think of one without the other. So similar, yet so different. Like oil and water. So close, yet, unmixable. Both determined and headstrong beyond all reason, but where Steela was rock Ahsoka was fire. Steela was a mountain, but Ahsoka was a storm. One immovable, the other unstoppable. Steela had been a present solution. Ahsoka was the untouchable illusion. He had made the practical choice; a politicians choice. What did the the rebel, the jedi, and the politician have in common?

They would have all chosen duty over love.

* * *

She wanders through his estate like a stray feline moving from room to room silent as the grave. She might as well be a ghost sent to haunt him. Despite her hovering presence, she never questions him or his moods. She doesn't have to. She feels it with him. All the stains of the past. He's dripping with pain and regret and all she can do is watch him suffer. She sees him for what he is, a victim of the war, whose lost more then he ever bargained for.

In return, he never brings up the order, why she left, or why she stays. He never questions why she agrees to work for him despite their apparent mutual irritation. He just lets it happen but gives her an alternate option by leaving a purse full of credits and the keys to the speeder on her dresser - just in case. She never touches either.

* * *

Rumors start to fly, and word spreads. They call him crazy. Grief ridden. Over worked. They say the stress of politics has mangled his young inexperienced mind, and that keeping a bounty hunter as a body guard is a death wish. They're right of course; most likely, but he'll never admit it.

They wonder what her hold on him is. Is he being black mailed? Threatened? Talk of affairs begins to brew, and this is where he draws the line. He calls her to his office only to send her on a week long errand. As she leaves he overhears the gossip of two guards, loud and crude form outside his office.

 _"That the girl?"_

 _"Yea."_

 _"Bit small for a bounty hunter."_

 _"She's his whore. Replacement for his dead lover."_

Ahsoka never breathes a word of the gossip. Never acknowledges it to his face. He can't help but wonder if she knows. _Of course she does._ He wonders if she cares. _Of course she does._ He briefly considers bringing it up. Apologizing for their crude remarks and sending her on her way. He thinks about it while she's gone, but her absence would only serve as a confirmation and he wouldn't do either of them the disservice.

After a week she returns.

He fires the guard.

* * *

He only calls her Tano, never Ahsoka or any other dreaded nickname. She can't understand why till the night she wanders past his room and sees him holding **her** rifle. Despite her better judgment, she knocked. In that moment it was as if a dam had broken. Wave upon wave of anger, pain, regret, sadness, and loss washed upon her. It was then she realized...

 _He blamed her._

All theses years he had blamed her, but he had hid it well. Once again she's frozen in his gaze. She can't speak. Can't breath. She apologizes and he turns away. She moves forward causing the marble to echo underneath the click of her steps. He cocks the rifle, and spits her name as if it were the ammo for the weapon itself. For one of the only moments in her life, she retreats.

She keeps apologizing from the other side of the door. Something wet and salty streaks down her cheeks, but she can't be bothered to care. She can't be bothered to move. She repeats it over and over.

If she could have saved her, she would. If it could have been her instead, even better.

* * *

He owed both of them his life. He had trusted both of them with his life. When one walked out, the other seemed to walk in. It left him with some small amount of comfort. Fire and steel, fire and steel; he never thought the cycle would end, but like with most things in life - it did.

Was he doomed to lose all the important woman in his life? First his mother and now Steela. Somehow fate had thrown Ahsoka at his door again, and he couldn't help but wonder if she was next.

* * *

Another week passes and Ahsoka makes herself scares. She wonders why she stays, she wonders why he lets her. It's a large estate, but she has jobs and a makeshift bunker in the underground. She can leave and go virtually anywhere.

She finally makes up her mind. He's safe now. No one is coming for him. Maybe they have given up. Maybe they know she's protecting him. Either way, her reputation serves her well. She's stubborn and hurt so she leaves without warning and bypasses the goodbyes.

Her feet tap at the marble stairs when his voice echoes past her ears. She feels a shiver. There it is again, her name, so foreign for lack of use on its own. He seems calmer, surprised, but the stain is still there.

"Tano…." He's trying to distance himself, but it's its not working.

"Bontari." She replies as his long strides catch up to her. He's silent for a moment longer, but thats all the time it takes for her to cross the threshold of the door. His words fall on deaf ears.

"Stay."

She's already gone.

* * *

Months pass before she returns.

She appears unannounced in his office, the stains of their last encounter still in her memory.

"I have to kill you again." She offers a small smile and surprisingly, one which he returns.

"Seems like I need a body guard then."

"So it seems."

Theres a light in his eyes that wasn't there last. Time has healed what is should, and finally, he looks whole.

"I'm not her." She speaks. Throwing it out there like a grenade.

"I know." He moves forward.

"I can't be her." She's breathless once again.

"I know."

"I be won't be her." He persists.

"I know." She steps back.

"I won't be a replacement." He's crosses the distance and his hand finds rest at the back of her neck, heat radiating from where their foreheads are touching. She can feel his breath across her cheeks and her mind dizzies as their eyes meet. This time, he doesn't miss his cue and responds before she can protest.

"You never were, Ahsoka. You never were."

And in that moment she can breathe again.


	6. Little Soka

**Little Soka**

"Master Plo Koon brings me to the temple at age four. I'm a temple kid, small, frightened, and wearing the teeth of a monster bigger then most pods.

"Little Soka" He calls to me, and I come running, - teeth and all.

I'm scared. It's finally hit me. I'm not at home, and I don't know how to go back. I don't think I can. There are other kids too. They cry, every night, but I'm told we shouldn't. I'm told we can't.

Crying isn't allowed.

Running isn't allowed.

Laughing is frowned upon.

I have to be serious. I have to be at peace. Even if I don't feel it. Sometimes they tease me - the other kids. They call me tail head or stumpy. So I run and hide.

There are others here too. Soldiers. They all look alike though. They wear big white armor and carry blaster rifles. I met one today, on my way to class. I bumped into him while taking a short cut I shouldn't have. I fell out of a vent and into a crate on the loading docs. Thats where he found me. At first he was surprised, but then he thought I was funny.

"It's raining younglings." He said. He asks me why I'm hiding in the vents. I don't answer.

In truth, I'm scared. I'm terrified of running into people. I'm surrounded by strangers and it's so unlike home. The places are strange and new. There are so many different species I have never seen. They frighten me. There is one Togrutan though. Master Shak Tii. She's so majestic. Like royalty, her monorails reach high like a crown and her head tails are so long they reach past her waist. I wonder if one day I'll be like her.

"I'm small, and I fit." I finally respond.

"That doesn't explain why you were there in the first place little one."

"I, I look different." I croak, confusion painting my features. Rex, the clone, laughs. It's a hearty laugh, one that bubbles from the bottom of his gut.

"Kid, consider yourself lucky. I know people who'd pay credits to look different. Listen, eh, you seem like an, erm, normal girl. It's gotta take someone with lots of gumption and bravery to crawl around in those vents up there. Take my advice and try a bit of confidence. Even if it's not there, fake it till you make it. Then one day, it will be there. Little battle strategy for you there."

He walked me back to the temple school, and into the caring _lecture_ of Master Plo.

Master Plo Koon says I shouldn't hide in the vents because, "Scampering about through the air ducts is an activity unbefitting a jedi. It's highly unsafe! You could get lost, or hurt. Not to mention, it's filthy!" I bow my head and pout a bit, considering how to plead my case. I stick my chin in the air and manage the clearest most authoritative voice I can muster.

"It's reconnaisance training. It's part of my battle strategy." Master Plo let out a deep sigh.

'Oh force, this child.'


End file.
